A Spanish missionary in Argentina

[Province “Nuestra Señora de la Misión- America del Sur] I am sending you a few lines about my missionary vocation and the mission where I am now. My missionary vocation arose in me when I was fifteen years old and it grew together with my vocation of Daughter of Charity. Very soon I understood that both went hand I hand. I always dreamt of being sent to a Mission Ad gentes. Once in the Community I requested several times to be sent and finally, here I am. Of course the objectives and motivations have been changing along the way, but the Lord has always given me the hope and happiness of belonging to Him and being able to announce Him in the place where I was, because being a missionary is to have Him and bringing Him, as Mary did to Elizabeth’s house, to transmit her happiness and the Salvation of God.

The objectives have been changing. When I was young I dreamt of going to any place in the world to announce Jesus Christ and in particular to “convert the infidels”, in the vocabulary of the time. Today my motivation, as a Daughter of Charity (missionary Ad Gentes) is by no means as ambitious. It is to be beside people who suffer, going and acting in “the periphery”; to suffer and to be with them; and alleviate so much misery and suffering. Of course, I see that it is a drop in the ocean, with a lot of prayer and allowing a lot of people to help.

In the neighbourhood “9th of November” most of the inhabitants are Evangelical Pentecostals, Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are 40 Catholic families but most of them have not received their First Holy Communion and even less their Confirmation. Most of them come from broken families, without resources, in sheet metal huts, without a stable job. There is drug addiction, alcoholism, school absenteeism and numerous lacks in a place as rich as Argentina plentiful of natural resources; it is only the consequence of rulers and corrupt regimes.

My work is limited to home visiting where I know first-hand the needs and problems. With the help of the projects of the Company, of Spain, their small contributions and the proceeds of a fair, we provide for the construction materials so that they could change their small huts for brick houses. With the group of missionary youths we have school support and catechesis for children. A group of Ladies of Charity (AIC) help with the fair and home visits. They solve problems of punctuality or collaborate in concrete actions such as the “October 11 mission” where we will visit families with a missionary catechesis. We will distribute seeds to 230 families to grow vegetable gardens; 40 trees will be planted and we will organise parties and games for the children, finishing the day with a Eucharist (large Mass in the sports field).

In the afternoons I coordinate the Parish catechesis of our neighbourhood of Villa Mitre (where the Community lives), AIC meetings, a missionary group and Bible group for school parents.

Pray that I will be a holy missionary and, of course, that I grow every day in the conviction that one thing is “to be” another “to do” and the real question it is not “to do” but “TO BE”.